Tinhuviel Artanis

Not-so-fried Fish
Below the Ice

The other day I took my mother out to dinner.  As she looked through the menu, she called my attention to the steak and fish combo, mentioning that the way the fried fish portions were laid out in the photo, they looked like (to her, mind you) a fetus.

“I’m not crazy, look at this,” she said.  “Over here is the head, these are the arms…”

“I think you’ve snapped, Mum.”

“Go to hell.  What’s it look like to you?”  (Abrasion is a hereditary trait in the Pettigrew family.)

“Fried fish on a plate.”

“Forget it.  I wonder what the Turkey Special looks like…”

Over a decade ago, Shriekback excavated the area of post-punk avant garde with a dense groove.  When Barry Andrews, Dave Allen and Carl Marsh released their first mini-LP Tench back in 1981, there were many necks strained from the double take.  Each member brought with them elements of their previous bands (XTC, Gang of Four, Out On Blue Six, respectively) and created a funk-rock-noise amalgamation.  Drummer Martyn Barker was acquired shortly afterward, and the quartet released a few records that were crazed and mysterious (Care, Jam Science and Oil And Gold), as well as a string of heavily rotated club singles like “My Spine (Is the Bass Line),” and the only rock song which used the word “parthenogenesis” (“Nemesis”).

Marsh was the first to bail out during a 1985 tour and the trio continued with guitarist Mike Cozzi, releasing a smoother record, Big Night Music.  Soon afterward, disinterest began to take a toll on Allen, and he vacated.  The remaining band members recorded Go Bang!, an album aimed solely at the marketplace.  If there was any irony in recording a cover of KC and the Sunshine Band’s loathsome “Get Down Tonight,” it was certainly lost.  After they had written the band off, Barker and Allen formed the faceless AOR-ploy King Swamp, and Andrews started a band called Illuminati, whose only album remains on ice.

Eventually, Allen, in his new position as label chief at World Domination, thought the time was right for a new Shriekback LP.  Andrews and Barker agreed and the result, Sacred City, like most of their prestigious body of work, has moments of tense ambience, shimmering pop, screaming noise and jungle grooves.

But what’s this got to do with fried fish looking like fetuses?  Two things:  does this tried-and-true “comeback” story look more like that of the Buzzcocks, or the Sex Pistols?  And is their reunion just another stab at commerce or does it only look that way?

“Comeback?”  questions the terminally polite Andrews.  “Go ahead, use it,” he concedes.

Even with all the dinosaur/last gasp connotations?

“That may well be so, but fact is fact and here we are, so make of it what you will.”

“I don’t think that’s totally appropriate,” counters Allen.  “It’s acceptable, but whenever I hear ‘comeback,’ I hear ‘failure.’”

So you think of the Gang of Four’s recent reunion then?

“That’s a bit unkind,” he corrects trying to ease smears on his old band.  “I think of it as a continuation.  God knows where it’s going to go now.”

Allen bailed out of Shriekback the first time around after a neverending world tour left him drained, stifled and looking quite miserable.  These days his stage demeanor is totally animated and he looks like he’s even having (gas) fun.  Fun despite having to open Shriekback shows with his other group Low Pop Suicide and living on a $26-dollar-a-day touring allowance.

“I was disillusioned playing the same set every night,” he says.  “I was tired of having to appease fans with hits, and my personal life was in shambles.  I had to leave and go do things.  I remember telling you that whatever happened in my life, I had to do King Swamp, just to see if I could.  Now, I fell a lot more inspired.”

And Allen has provided his share of inspirations as well:  his terse bass lines during his tenure in Gang of Four and Shriekback predate all the new tattooed bass-slapping plagiarists that have sprouted up in funk-metal cliché bands in regional music scenes.

“Yeah,” he concurs.  “It seems that’s more like cabaret now.  And I was concerned about [being construed as a funk-metal band] to the point where I had discussed it with Barry before this tour and he felt the same way.  I was talking to Flea at Lollapalooza and he told me he learned everything about bass from the first two Gang of Four records.  But it sounds to me like he actually listened to Shriekback!”

“The time is really right for us,” says Andrews.  “Now we don’t have to wonder what the single’s going to be or what our place is in the market.  We’ve returned to the same principle we had when we made Care – if it’s exciting we’ll do it.”

Chinese water torture seems far more exciting (if not more fulfilling) than the truly tepid Go Bang!

“We have a light and frivolous side so we figured we’d make a light and frivolous record,” he counters.  “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

Even at the expense of what you do best:  propulsive funk and dark atmospherics?

“I think you can trace Shriekback’s career in those two threads:  a dancey, noisy side and a dark, brooding bit.  There’s no shame in something different.

“I think it’s quite unfair to raise the banner of a sell-out album, which I believe is what you’re implying,” he says with a little annoyance.  “I think every time you make a record your motivations are complex, so in your implications that Go Bang! was made to be commercial, well, yeah.  And we were [trying to be commercial] on all the other records we made too.”

The latest LP Sacred City is a song cycle (the ‘90s term for “concept album”) featuring vignettes of city life.  Andrews’ original concept was intended to take the form of a written thesis or a movie, until Allen called him up to discuss reforming the group (actually, Andrews has created a video for the album which will be available shortly).  There is the foreboding darkness of “Below” and “3 am,” the steamy grooves rising from the street on “Beatles Zebra Crossing” and “Signs” and the noise overload of “The Bastard Sons of Enoch.”  For this LP, the band reassessed their energy and avoided the hard-driving funk synapses, aiming instead for subtlety.

“Yes, it’s a more subtle record,” agrees Andrews.  “In terms of some of the African-y grooves and brush rhythms and such, sure.  On “Bastard Sons” we had guitars being played with power drills and knives but at the end of the day, some of them didn’t make it through our filtration system.”

What is that filtration system?  Here’s a man who’s scored film music, played with XTC, Iggy Pop, Robert Fripp and still has the enthusiasm to get onstage and, ugh, shriek (sorry).

“I can’t sing like Aretha Franklin or Bono,” Andrews muses aloud.  “I can’t play keyboards like Rick Wakeman.  All I do is have ideas and an energy to want to make things.  The fact that it comes out in music is because I’ve been doing it for a while.”

Shriekback’s live line-up is augmented by the serrated violin stylings of Cat Evans and guitarist Cozzi.  Another tour may be in the works, and a new Shriekback LP may appear next fall.  Despite a hiatus from wild shamanic dancing and playing in front of people, Shriekback theorize that the difference between rejuvenation and adrenalin is merely in the spelling.

“Playing live is odd,” admits Andrews.  “You put on weird clothes, jump around, get sweaty and shout at people, and they behave in the most unnatural way.”

Are you apologizing?

“No, not at the moment.  I haven’t done anything terrible yet!”

Shriekback's 13th studio album, 'Without Real String or Fish', is currently available from the band's website.  If your mouse aim ain't what it used to be, just click the album cover below.  While you visit, be sure to sign up for the band's newsletter, as you will be provided with opportunities to nab yourself some rare or never-before-heard songs, freebies, and all the latest Shriek news that's relevant.

Shriekback's Finally, whatever you do, do not read this and then not share it with everyone.  Should you be the only happy member of your Ka-Tet? Nay! Be the precious petal we all know you are, and spread the good news to all four corners of the world! 

Trouser Press (TP89) / September 1983

WHO: Carl Marsh (guitars/vocals), Barry Andrews (organ/vocals), Dave Allen (bass)

HOW:  In mid-1982, Dave Allen was casting about for musicians after leaving the Gang of Four. He found XTC/League of Gentlemen vet Barry Andrews and ex-Out on Blue Six-er Carl Marsh to be kindred spirits. Shriekback began as a sextet with drummer Brian Nevill, singer Linda Burns, and manager Linda Nevill, but halved during the Tench sessions, leaving the current self-contained trio. Last November they added drummer Martyn Barker and percussionist Pedro Ortiz for gigs.

WHY:  Shriekback generates danceable tension through interaction of hot (bass/Linn drum machine bottom) and cool (chanted, cerebral lyrics and droning melodies). Andrews in particular gets incredible mileage out of simple sustained organ chords. The band’s songwriting methods are unorthodox at best: going into the studio with little more than some drum machine patterns, Shriekback emerged 19 days later with the finished Care album. Tunes range from deviant pop-funk ("Lined Up," with a vocal assist from Kirsty MacColl) to Enoic ambient ("Hapax Legomena").

DAVE ALLEN: "Whatever people get from [the music] is what’s right for them. And that’s fine with me. We’re not in a position to say, ‘Some are dance, some are weird, some are this, some are that.’ It’s really just whatever people experience from them."

By Robert Payes

Click to purchase the recent re-issue of Care and learn more about the Shrieks.

Some words give people the willies. The worst of these is ‘Love’. Many will cross the road to avoid it, more sit still and squirm.

Caught with its trousers down too many times, ‘Love’ has lost its dignity, rolls round the tongue like melting chocolate. Who will restore it to its rightful place?

Shriekback will. Already they can talk of ‘Love’ with nary a trace of a blush. Dertermined to be honest, Shriekback have stripped down to fundamentals. What could be more fundamental than love?

Dave Allen (ex-Gang of Four), Barry Andrews (ex-XTC) and Carl Marsh (ex-Out On Blue Six) formed Shriekback to drop their defences. Tired of rock and roll and all the myths that sail in her, they set about establishing their own priorities. Quickly signing a publishing deal with EMI that gave them a great deal of free studio time, they set about discovering a way of playing together. Their first min-LP ‘Tench’ took 5 months to record and was as tense as its title. Nothing quite clicked, the edges were interesting.

Last July, the three signed a pact, a written document titled ‘The Seven Pillars of Shriekback’. Seven rules that commit the three to one another, to love and to energy. Since then, the sailing has got plainer every day.

"When we began," explains Dave, "we had all this free studio time in which to experiment with one another. It was interesting, but we lacked a direction and a purpose. If there’s no framework, you can just storm out in an argument and destroy the whole thing. We decided we were to carry on, we needed to make a commitment to one another. We’d run out of studio time and were moving into rehearsal rooms. It’s easy to keep things together in a studio but a tiny little rehearsal room is another story. So, we wrote up the ‘Seven Pillars’."

The signing of the document coincided with Shriekback’s discovery of a direction. Working upwards from a rhythm track, they made ‘My Spine Is The Bassline’ and discovered they’d almost made a disco track! Now they’ve just released an album, ‘Care’, recorded with ease in 19 days, and a single, ‘Lined Up’, which deserves to be one of the club hits of the year. Shriekback are onto something.

"The aim of this group is to communicate," explains Barry Andrews. "The bottom-line of what there is to communicate to people is love, a sense of relatedness to each other that is expressed through energy. We’ve all put up with not communicating, sitting on the tube, staring at the ads. It doesn’t rate. What is really satisfying is communicating, sharing something with everybody else."

Shriekback are determined to avoid the rock and roll treadmill. They work hard but it doesn’t feel like work. They no longer distinguish between work and play. They’ve come out of the studio and found that people love them live. So much so, Barry Andrews finds it frightening. Without the barriers of the rock and roll pose, he can feel the brunt of his audience’s feeling.

"To be close to anybody is frightening. It’s particularly frightening to be close to a room full of people you’ve never met before. Not that anyone is going to point a gun at you but when you fully engage in communication, the first thing you hit is fear. Sitting on the tube, you see the blind terror in people’s eyes, the terror of being touched."

Shriekback have worked hard to organize their set-up, to take responsibility for their own group. They want to do away with safety nets.

"The safest thing to do, is not to do it wholeheartedly," explains Barry. "It’s easy to blame the gear, or the roadies, or each other. It’s quite comfortable not to take responsibility. With this group, all three of us are doing that. We arrive early for sound-checks! We’re trying to keep things clear."

Vulnerability is Shriekback’s backbone. They aren’t troupers, determined that the show must go on, nor macho men, hiding behind muscle.

"I spent a long time hiding behind things," says Dave. "Now it’s time to come out." Gradually three shy men are coming out of their shells.

"We’re English," laughs Barry. "That means there’s times when we’re really afraid of each other. We’re all normal white English boys, we get embarrassed. But we’re getting through. The actual turning point for me was when we stopped blaming each other when things went wrong."

Shriekback are delighted to discover they don’t have to lie. The night before this interview they played Heaven in London. When bouncers started beating up their mates at the front, they stopped playing.

"I felt really good we could stop, then start again. We were so glad we could handle it. When we did start again, the crowd was more behind us. Stopping onstage is almost suicidal! But why pretend? Admitting that things go wrong is really exciting: you stop acting the powerful figure onstage. We’re not different from other bands, we’re just becoming more and more aware of being human. Men don’t easily admit to making mistakes. It’s such a relief when you do!"

Shriekback make records and they play live. They treat the two processes quite differently. Live, they play with a drummer and a percussionist, in the studio they use a Linndrum. Live, they are fiercely percussive, in the studio they are more curious, more open to moods. This is how it should be.

"I’d recommend you forget you’d ever heard our records when you see us live," says Barry. "The way we see the recorded songs is like covers of other people’s songs. That gives us the right to maul them. What’s appropriate live isn’t necessarily so in the studio.

Carl agrees. "We could take loads of gear and lots of singers and reproduce the record. But what’s the point? You wouldn’t even have the sleeve."

Their path will get more open and more curious; Shriekback have nothing to fear but fear itself.

For more information and

to purchase Care, please click.